You only have to spit into a small paper bag, let one of the nurses scan the RFID tag on your wrist, wait until your number shows up on the monitor, touch the RFID reader on the printer and take your certificate.

Bring your own is the name of the game in Morocco if you want to have a nice grill dinner. You buy your meat from the butcher, the vegetables and the bread from the shops next door, and let it prepare nearby on the grill.

We wanted camel meat and searched for a butcher displaying a camel’s foot to advertise the delicacy.

Our butcher saw that we haven’t eaten any hot meal for days and suggested one kilo of ground camel meat with some extra fat to make it even tastier.

We brought some onions and cucumbers and fresh baguette from the bakery.

and asked the restaurant around the corner to prepare the meat.

Ten minutes later we had the most delicious meal you can imagine.

A fiche (form in French) is a small but essential piece of paper containing your personal data. At every military and police checkpoint you have to hand over one for each passenger of the car, and there are many of those checkpoints in Morocco , Western Sahara, and Mauritania. I’ve just finished cutting 180 fishes, that should be enough.

A few years ago the second most important French word to remember was cadeau, present. While fiches were only important to soldiers and policemen, petit cadeau was the most important thing for everyone, including soldiers and policemen. But things have changed. In 2011 we had two banana boxes full of petit cadeau and ran out of stuff somewhere in Senegal. In 2018 I returned to Europe with some of the swiss army knives still in my pocket. This year we take a few t-shirts, baseball caps, and the 4 leftover swiss army knives.